ESCONDIDO -- Assemblyman Mark Wyland, R-Del Mar, said Friday that tackling the cost of illegal immigration at the state level will be at the top of his agenda this legislative session.

Wyland, who was elected to his second term in November, has reintroduced a constitutional amendment that would bar the state from granting illegal immigrants driver's licenses, lower in-state college tuition, voting rights in local elections and most other public benefits, including nonemergency health care.

Wyland said in an editorial board meeting with North County Times on Friday that if the bill is not passed by the Legislature, he is prepared to take the issue directly to the voters through a ballot initiative.

A similar bill was introduced late in the last session by the North County assemblyman, but it was never heard in the Democrat-dominated Legislature.

Opponents say the bill, which was reintroduced Tuesday, is unlikely to reach Gov. Schwarzenegger's desk again this session, given the large majority that Democrats hold in both houses of the Legislature and its lack of support among the Republican leadership.

Wyland said many of his constituents are passionate about curbing the cost of illegal immigration and that he aims to address their concerns.

"What I think we need to do is create a society where law matters, where we care about laws," Wyland said. "Things like voting are important, citizenship makes a difference, (and) people feeling that the government … represents them."

A report released earlier this month by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative-leaning lobbying group, estimated that illegal immigration costs Californians $10.5 billion each year. Wyland cited the report in a recent column to support his bill.

However, Wyland said his constitutional amendment does not eliminate most of the expenses included in the report, such as the cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants, incarcerating illegal immigrants convicted of crimes or providing emergency health care.

That's because most of those expenses are mandated by federal law, he said.

Wyland said he estimated the bill could save the state "hundreds of millions of dollars." Moreover, he said he hopes the measure will fuel a national debate about federal immigration policy and immigration law enforcement.

A spokesman for Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, said Wyland's bill has little chance of passing because it harkens back to the controversial Proposition 187, which sought to outlaw most public benefits for illegal immigrants, including public education for their children.

Cedillo has tried unsuccessfully to overturn another 1994 law that bars illegal immigrants from receiving driver's licenses and identification cards, which in part sparked Wyland's bill.

Edward Headington, Cedillo's spokesman, said times have changed since the anti-illegal immigrant sentiments that led the electorate to pass Proposition 187 in 1994 by a two-thirds margin. Headington added that many Republican leaders want to avoid being labeled as anti-Latino.

"There's a better chance of capturing the Loch Ness monster than getting this bill through," said Headington said. "Republicans want to keep an arms-length distance from these mean-spirited initiatives."

Wyland said he is working with the California Republican Assembly, a group spearheading the effort to qualify a ballot initiative similar to his constitutional amendment.

The group has collected more than 150,000 signatures of the more than 600,000 it needs, he said.

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-5426 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.